Chapel of the Cross Children & Family Ministry

That’s where we’re staying for Thanksgiving: Home. If you’re traveling, be safe. And remember that Home is wherever and whenever you feel love. Maybe Home is like Jesus. It can cross miles. It can be in all times. It can connect you to what matters most.

The church year is about to end but COVID? We don’t know. Thanksgiving plans? They’ve changed. (And they might change again.) We feel like we’re sitting in limbo, waiting. We’ve gotten really good at waiting this year.

We’re still thinking about friends and how much we miss them and how close they are even when we’re apart. We’re reaching across screens and phone lines and the United States Postal Service to hold our community tight. We’re inspired, we’re encouraged, we’re reassured.

We’re reaching the end of the church year. Today we celebrate Christ the King and next Sunday – the first Sunday in Advent – we begin to prepare for his birth. Every year, the Christ child is born again. Every year, we are filled with new hope.

Today, the Lavines teach us a song for Christ the King Sunday and the Bradburys teach us to make crowns with our Faith-at-Home supplies. If you don’t have Faith-at-Home supplies, you can cut out a crown from any paper, and decorate it however you like.

There are a lot of songs that thank our friends. Do you think that shows how important friends are? Which friends are important to you? Which friends do you want to thank?

Today we say thank you to the friends not coming to Thanksgiving dinner. Thank you to the family staying home. Thank you to the people traveling and gathering safely. This is hard.

We’re a week away from Thanksgiving and like everything this year, it will be different than the Thanksgivings we’ve known before. We still have lots of reasons to be grateful. We have lots of reasons to say, “Thank you.” What are yours? Send a video or photo we can share. Or just tell the people you love how you feel. Tell them how grateful you are.

We’re not doing much traveling now. We may not see the ones we love this Thanksgiving. But we can still meet each other – even if we’re frozen in a Zoom meeting, even if a dog is barking when we try to talk on the phone. How will you connect with friends and family in the coming weeks?

That’s a fun word to say! Thessalonians. The Thessalonians were people who lived in a part of Greece called Thessalonica (or Salonica). Paul sent letters to the Christians there, encouraging them to keep the faith. Walden, Desmond and Jeremiah Murphy tell us more about epistles and Desmond confirms that yes, reading other people’s letters is sometimes boring but also … epistles can be fun.

Like Monday, right? But with deer. And a bit of Psalm 42. And some Beatles.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
    so my soul longs for you, O God.